


send you back home with a light that's beaming

by banksoflochlomond



Series: it's just the way things are in my head [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Eddie's braver than he thinks he is, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, SO, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred kinda, but it's screwing with him, hoo boy i have gone through a LOT this past month and we love PROJECTION, i cannot write characters i can only write myself, if you don't like those read the other one it legit picks up right after this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 11:50:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20929769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/banksoflochlomond/pseuds/banksoflochlomond
Summary: Eddie crashed his car, and he tells everyone that it was a mistake.





	send you back home with a light that's beaming

Eddie crashed his car, and he tells everyone that it was a mistake.

He tells Myra so, as he’s shoving shirts (folded neatly, of course) into his suitcase. It’s not like she’s listening, because she hardly listens to anything he says, and she’s freaked out enough about the car crash and Eddie’s insistence on leaving to go to his childhood hometown, of all places, when he’d told her in one of his more vulnerable moments that he didn’t remember much from home, and moreover, he didn’t  _ want  _ to, because thinking about it made him feel horrible, all twisted-up inside.

So Myra’s screaming at him, telling him he’s being irrational and has he considered adding anti-psychotics to his regimen because this seemed like a breakdown if she’d ever seen one, and all Eddie can do is say, “I have to go, the car crash was an accident, I have to go, the crash was an accident.”

Myra tells him that he sounds like a liar, and Eddie shrugs and runs outside to the Uber that he’d called, shoving the luggage in the back and throwing himself in the backseat as the driver takes off.

“That seems like a real scorcher,” the driver says, turning the corner and finally pulling out of view of Myra’s tomato face and shaking fists. Eddie shrugs, sinks lower into his seat.

“I...crashed my car,” Eddie says, and then adds quickly, “on accident.”

Maybe he says it too fast. Eddie can see the driver’s eyebrows shoot up in the rearview window, and he readjusts his grip on the wheel, like he’s afraid Eddie’s gonna crash this car, too.

“Damn, sorry dude,” the driver says. “She’s that cut up about a crash?”

Eddie shrugs. “I’m probably gonna leave her. Ask for a divorce and shit.” The words taste like nothing when he says them. He doesn’t feel anything at all about it. About talking about his wife of fifteen years like that.

The driver whistles, but doesn’t say anything else, so Eddie gives him five stars when they pull up to the airport.

At the Chinese restaurant, Eddie’s more nonchalant about it. Pulls it off better. When Richie mentions vomiting, Eddie says he crashed his car, and everyone connects it to the deep-seated fear they’d felt when Mike called.

Eddie had felt it too, of course.

That’s just.

Not why he crashed his car, is all.

But suddenly, things are hatching out of their fortune cookies, gooey, slimy, otherworldly creatures that fill the air with the stench of oil and grime and it’s the fucking least of Eddie’s worries, why he’d purposely run a fucking red light when he’s gonna fucking die in this shitty Chinese restaurant because of  _ Mike fucking Hanlon-- _

***

“You could’ve just left it as is,” Richie says, staring Eddie’s arm cast.

Eddie stares at him, slowly lowering his comic book that he’d stolen from Richie’s collection. “What the fuck?”

“I mean, it clearly is meant to say ‘Loser,’” Richie says, shrugging and leaning back in his desk chair, like he’s making fucking good points. “You should’ve just left it. Everyone knows that you are one, it makes more sense than Sharpie-ing over it in a  _ different color. _ ”

“What, so I’m just supposed to walk around with ‘Loser,’ written on my cast?” Eddie demands. “I have to wear this for  _ eight weeks, _ Richie, I’d have to go back to school with that shit--”

“And now they’re gonna see someone who’s trying to elevate their status,” Richie says, gesturing at the cast. “It looks like a desperate cry for pussy, is all. You can’t elevate your status that way. You gotta work with what you got, Eds.”

“Don’t  _ call  _ me that,” Eddie says. “And I’m not the one desperate for pussy, you’re the one always looking left and right for a girlfriend. Tell me, scale of like one to ten, how annoyed were you that Ben and Bill were all over Beverly before you could get there?”

Richie rolls his eyes. “Bev didn’t count,” Richie says, which, fair. “She’s too...Bev, you know? And besides,” Richie says, and his grin is so wide that Eddie fucking knows what he’s gonna say before he says, “I’m already fucking your mom, and I wouldn’t want Ms. K to get jealous.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says, and flops down on the floor of Richie’s bedroom. It’s fucking gross in there, with old t-shirts thrown carelessly on the ground and trash piled near, but not quite in, the trash can. There are empty pudding cups sitting on Richie’s dresser, and they’re so old that they’re developing that gross, caramelized crust on the scraped-clean sides. It’s kind of everything that Eddie fucking hates, but--after everything this summer. Well.

Eddie stares down at his cast. To be fair, Richie’s got a point. The shape of the ‘s’ is still clearly visible under the red, brilliant ‘v’. It’s clear that Eddie did it himself, and because of that, he’ll probably be called a fucking creep.

It’s probably a step up from ‘fairy,’ though.

“They call you that?” 

Eddie blinks, and sits up. Richie’s pushed himself away from his desk, is facing Eddie with his eyes narrowed. Eddie has no idea what that means.

Eddie hadn’t known he’d said that out loud, but it’s not like it’s a fucking secret. “Sure,” Eddie says. “Along with, like, everything else.”  _ Freak. Little bitch. An actual sick bastard. Mama’s Boy? More like Mammoth’s Boy. Get it? Cuz she’s so fat!  _

“I--” Richie opens his mouth, and then shuts it. “Are--?” he cuts himself off again. And then he frowns, rapping his hands against the desk. Nervous in a real way, then.

“You okay?” Eddie asks, cautiously. They’d all had episodes, in the past few weeks or so. Stan more than most of them, but all of them in different ways. For Richie, it always started out with tapping. Like he could push all the excess fear out of his fingertips. Eddie was always better at spotting it than the others, but that was because Richie was always hyperactive. When it came to real shit, Eddie just knew that Richie got hyperactive in a different way.

Richie stops tapping his fingers. He chews the inside of his cheek and puckers his lips, then puffs up his cheeks like a blowfish. “I’m  _ so  _ fine,” he says, but it’s only half-there. Richie spins himself around in the desk chair, stares up at the ceiling. “I just...I thought that after we killed that fucking clown, we’d never have to feel like shit again.”

Eddie presses his lips together, opens his mouth to say something--

“Not that I feel like shit,” Richie adds. “Because I fucked your mom last night, so I feel  _ great, _ Eds _ . _ ”

Eddie groans and flops back down onto the floor.

***

Everyone just seems so fucking--scared, is all.

Which makes some fucking sense. It takes the form of your worst fear to mess with you. It preys on children. It’s probably the worst thing that’s ever been birthed out of this fuck lab of a universe, yaddayaddayadda.

Eddie’s scared too, of course. You can’t fucking shake that. Eddie can’t shake the fact that It legitimately hurt him--It snapped his forearm in half, It made Eddie feel like he was dying--It made Eddie feel like he could die, with the leper creeping ever closer to him, whispering things that Eddie could still hear in the middle of the night--

But, listen. 

Eddie’s just. Fucking drunk right now, and he’s pissed as  _ shit. _

He knocks on Richie’s door, and by knocks, it’s probably more of a heavy thumping. He’s got a bottle of Rose in his hand--fucking sue him, he likes good wine--and it’s mostly empty, and all Eddie can think about is--

Richie opens the door, and Eddie says, “That fucking  _ clown  _ ruined my goddamn life.”

Richie blinks.

He’s nearly undressed, only wearing an old college t-shirt that’s got holes near the collar, and boxers that sit loose on his hips. He’s not wearing his glasses, and honestly, it’s a better look for him.

“Get some fucking contacts instead of the coke bottles, asshole,” Eddie says, muscling his way inside. “And also a goddamn haircut. You look like every paunchy sitcom dad on the fucking planet.”

Richie blinks, and lets his hotel door swing close. “Fuck you, too.”

Eddie gulps down the rest of his Rose and sets it on the dresser. He sees an empty half-handle of whiskey next to it, and rolls his eyes. “You go to fucking town, man. Didn’t you drink at the restaurant, too?”

“Pennywise ain’t shit if I convince my liver to give out, first,” Richie mutters. “What the fuck is your problem with It, anyway? Aside from all the,” Richie waves his hand around like it’s a coherent gesture, “Childhood trauma.”

Eddie whirls around and honest-to-god, shakes a fucking fist. “My problem is that he made me forget all that fucking shit,” Eddie says.

Richie blinks. Leans back against the door. “You wanna  _ remember  _ the most traumatic experience you’ve ever gone through?”

Eddie snorts. “Try living with fucking--Sonia Kaspbrak, shithead. That clown has nothing on her, or fucking Myra.”

“I live with fucking your mother and your wife every day,” Richie says very seriously.

“I hate you so  _ fucking much,”  _ Eddie says, and takes a step back, because he wants to move forward, move closer to Richie, and he somehow knows in his wine-addled brain that that isn’t the best idea that he’s ever had.

“Eds,” Richie says, “Ever since coming back to Derry, I just wish that I hadn’t, that I don’t have to remember any of this shit. Why the fuck would you be bitter about not remembering this shithole?”

“There are good parts to it, too,” Eddie says. That fuzzy memory, clouded by fear, of Richie grabbing his head and not letting go so that he didn’t have to look at Pennywise. The hammock. The glint of sunlight off of Richie’s coke bottle glasses, and the curl of his hair that he lost the fight against in junior year. “Our friends, for one, dipshit.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, and he moves to sag against the old hotel bed. “But now I’m gonna have fucked-up clown nightmares. I just want my usual fucking nightmares back.”

“I just wish I could’ve fucking  _ remembered, _ ” Eddie says, because it thrums in him. This fucking heat, in his bones. Just the  _ knowledge  _ that he could’ve been--but he isn’t.

“I crashed my car on purpose, when Mike called,” Eddie hears himself say.

Richie blinks up at him. He’s got pretty eyes. Blue as shit, not as buggy when they’re not behind thick glass lenses. “What.”

“It’s not--I wasn’t,” Eddie says, because Stan flashes through his mind just as quick. Blood, bath, water, red. Like he was right there with Stan, when Stan did it. Eddie shudders. “It’s more like--you know when I realized my pills were placebos?”

Richie snorts. “Yeah. You were ballsy as hell for the rest of that summer, til you got pneumonia for real and blamed it on the Clubhouse.”

Eddie nods. “I just--I wish I’d remembered that. Because if I did--maybe I wouldn’t be such a…”

“Pussy?” Richie suggests, leaning back. His shirt rides up a bit, and Eddie definitely does not focus on the strip of skin between the hem of the shirt and his boxers. Not at all. “Coward? Little bitch? Wimp? A fucking--”

“Yeah, that, Jesus,” Eddie says, and sits down on the bed next to Richie. “After we killed--thought we killed--It, there was this...I just felt like myself. For  _ once.  _ Like I wasn’t gonna let anyone else fucking--tell me who I am.” Eddie wraps his arms around his knees. On this king-sized bed, next to Richie, he feels tiny. For once, though, it doesn’t bother him. “And then I fucking  _ did, _ and I just--wish I could’ve. Held onto that, is all. Being fucking--brave.”

Richie’s silent for a few beats. Eddie closes his eyes, breathes in the room. It smells like the sharp scent of alcohol, mixed with that ugly, heavy scent of must. They should’ve cleaned this hotel room better. If Eddie contracts Legionnaire’s Disease, he’s gonna fucking sue.

“Man, how much did you have to  _ drink _ ?” Richie says eventually, pitching his voice higher like he’s trying out a new Voice. When Eddie turns to look over at him, though, he’s playing with the edge of his threadbare shirt. Not really looking at Eddie at all, and when he speaks next, it’s with his nerdy fucking voice, the one that’s actually real. “You can still do it, though. Be brave. It’s who you are, so.”

Eddie stares at Richie. Slats of moonbeam color his face white-and-gray in the dark hotel room, like a painting. His lips are slightly parted, and Eddie thinks about kissing them for a moment. He pulls his knees tighter to his chest.

“I don’t think so,” Eddie says. “I really, really don’t.”

***

Betty Ripsom’s legs had been Eddie’s first clue.

Betty had been known for her legs.

Before she went missing, before she was ripped apart by It--she wore these skirts hiked up too high on her waist, exposing most of her smooth, pale thighs. 

Objectively, she had nice legs. Toned from volleyball practice, one or two moles speckled across the unblemished skin. A slight curve from the hipbone to the kneecap. Artful, really.

All the guys would talk about her legs. Probably because they were young and fucking virginal and hadn’t even heard the word  _ Playboy  _ before, so all they had were some classmate’s legs to gawk at. Even Stan and Bill would talk about Betty’s latest miniskirt, how the skirts rode up when she sat down sometimes. They’d sound fixated on it, sort of breathy sometimes.

Eddie just thought it was creepy. Like, Betty was just wearing a skirt that showed a bit of skin, what was the big fucking whoop. It wasn’t like it did  _ anything _ except make a weird fashion statement. It just made it look like there wasn’t enough material for her skirt, so they’d had to cut it short.

But when Eddie tried saying that to Bill as he waxed poetic about the skirts after school, Bill just stared at him, hands stilling on his bike lock.

“It’s  _ sexy, _ though,” Bill said.

Eddie blinked. “No, it’s not,” he said.

“Are you insane? She looks so good like that,” Stan chipped in, which was a big statement from Stan, of all people.

Richie just shrugged. “I kinda get what Eddie’s saying,” he said. “Besides, Eddie looks way better in those short shorts than Betty does in those skirts.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “You forgot to do a voice, asshole.”

“What?”

“When you say something fucking dumb, you always do a voice,” Eddie said. “You forgot to do one, like a dumbass.”

“Oh,” Richie said, blinking. He readjusted his grip on his backpack. “Well, tally-ho, my goodfellow! Thank you for alerting my attention to the mattah! I shan’t forget again, dahling.”

“You’re an idiot,” Eddie said.

“I can’t believe you’re not attracted to Betty Ripsom,” Bill said, shaking his head and finally pulling off his bike lock. “She’s like, the hottest girl at school right now.”

Eddie shrugged, even though he felt uncomfortable. Squirmy inside, kind of, even though he didn’t know why. “She looks weird, not sexy. That’s all I’m saying.”

So, yeah.

Betty Ripsom had been Eddie’s first clue.

***

Eddie doesn’t need any fucking medication.

He  _ knows  _ that.

He doesn’t even have asthma. There’s literally nothing wrong with him. He’s healthy as a goddamn horse.

It doesn’t stop him from going to the pharmacy.

It’s weird, to have two versions of the truth rattling around in your brain. 

Just as much as he knows that he doesn’t need any of the stupid sugar pills that Myra and his mom foisted on him, he knows that he  _ needs  _ them, or his body’s gonna shut down, his allergies will act up, he’ll go into anaphylactic shock just from touching a blade of grass. Just as much as he doesn’t need his water-vapor inhaler, it’s the only thing keeping his weak lungs working.

Eddie doesn’t want to fucking do this anymore. He doesn’t want to just--buy into the realities that he’s let other people create for him. He doesn’t want to go to the fucking pharmacy.

But he does.

Eddie thinks that it’s the same, warring kind of impulses that lead him into the basement, honestly.

The blinking, fluorescent lighting, the horrible metal shelving, the tarp and his mother screaming at him to let her out--

It’s all a bit comical, in retrospect. Too nightmarish to be real.

When Eddie sees his mom chained up like that, voice shrill and demanding for him to let her go...Eddie guesses that It thinks It’s getting to Eddie. That not being able to save his mom, or Myra, is what will ruin Eddie, make him give in.

Eddie can’t pull the chain for his mother, and he realizes this at the exact same time that he realizes that he doesn’t  _ want  _ to.

It’s a gross realization. One that kind of oozes down into his bones as he backs away, and he can’t not listen to her screams, just the same as he can’t not let her die. He hates her and he needs her, and he fucking--he’s done. He can’t do this anymore. He just. He can’t. He can’t give It the power.

When he turns around, the leper is right there.

_ “Fuck,”  _ Eddie gasps, and it’s chasing him on its stumpy legs and Eddie’s stumbling back, and his mother is screaming bloody murder and Eddie fucking came in for a fucking inhaler he didn’t even  _ need _ because he’s too afraid to live his own fucking life--

Eddie turns around and before he knows it, he’s throttling the fucking leper.

_ “Fuck you,” _ Eddie says, and he says it again, and again and again and again and it feels weak, It feels small, It feels like It’s--

It pukes on him.

Eddie winces back in disgust, nose clogging with oily grime and suddenly the basement is just being refurbished and there’s only Eddie, still covered head-to-toe in the vomit of a probably-interdimensional being.

“God _ dammit, _ ” Eddie says, and feels in his pocket to make sure that the inhaler is still there.

***

It’s not the second clue, but.

It made the biggest impression, probably.

Years and years and years later, Eddie would still wake up with the raspy, wheezing voice, desperate and dying, whispering like Its lips were pressed right against Eddie’s ear:  _ I’ll suck you for a quarter, kid. I’ll do it for a dime. _

Only now could Eddie remember the half-rotten mouth. Yellowing eyes, one popping out like it was attached only by a thin membrane. The very  _ male  _ appearance of the leper, despite thin, long strands of white-blond hair slithering out of a gray papery scalp. 

It knew.

And yeah, Eddie had his own suspicions at that point. Suspicions borne out of Bill’s jawline and arms and Stan’s sweet breathy laugh and Richie--fucking, Richie’s stupid sense of humor and the way his eyes would glint every time he tried to goad on Eddie. 

But hearing it, seeing it come from a wasted, mealy body--

Like that’s what Eddie would become. Like that’s what Eddie was always meant to be, if he moved further into it.

Eddie could throw away the gazebo pills and his fucking inhaler and his stupid fanny pack and he could talk smack with Richie about everything, but that’s what stuck with him. That’s the part he could never tell his friends, that’s the part that lodged deep in his chest, like shrapnel.

Even when he forgot who he really was.

_ I’ll suck you for a quarter, kid. I’ll do it for a dime. _

The only fight Eddie ever got into was in college. A guy had called him a faggot, and Eddie fought him until the guy was bleeding from the mouth. Eddie ended up with a pretty bad concussion, but the guy ended up in the hospital.

Eddie hadn’t thought he’d been found out. He hadn’t thought  _ how did he figure it out, _ he hadn’t freaked out because of the slur. Instead,there had been this--all-consuming fear. Right at the base of his chest. For a second, Eddie could’ve sworn that the guy had yellowing eyes, and suddenly, Eddie had just been on him, like a rabid animal.

_ Hey, come back here, kid! I’ll do it for free! _

Years and years and years later, Eddie thinks that maybe that’s why he couldn’t break the cycle.

He carried fear with him, even thousands of miles and years away from Derry.

He let It in, and he let It hold him down. 

***

Richie almost dies and Eddie doesn’t do  _ shit. _

_ Why the hell didn’t you move, _ Bill screams at him, and it’s okay because he’s right. Bill’s hands shaking, veins are popping out of his skin. The only time Eddie’s ever seen Bill angrier has only ever been at Pennywise, and Eddie shrinks back. Bill notices, and his face drops, and in the darkness of the Neibolt house, he looks so  _ old  _ for the first time. Lines creasing down his face from his eyes to his cheeks, face weathered and set. 

“You’ve gotta do better,” Bill says, stepping away, wiping a palm over his old face.

And he’s right. He’s absolutely right.

Richie had been about to die.

Even now, as Richie sits up, chest heaving as Ben and Mike pull him to his feet, Eddie’s not even sure if he’s still alive. It washes over him like waves, again and again, beating at him:  _ Richie almost died, and it’s my fault. It almost killed him and that’s on me. I did that to Richie _ .

Richie’s making some dumb joke, shoulders trembling only slightly. Eddie thinks he’s doing some dumb voice, because Bev laughs like it’s not very funny, but the blood is still pounding in Eddie’s ears like he’d been the one who almost died a moment ago.

Eddie stares at Richie until Richie turns his head, like he’s about to check on Eddie, and Eddie darts his eyes away, focuses on a piece of rotting floor board, instead.

Eddie’s fucking weak, and cowardly, and when Richie had almost got his face eaten, all Eddie could feel was paralysis. Like he had no fight or flight instinct, just fucking--playing dead. And that was the most fear Eddie’s ever fucking felt. More than the leper, more than when his mom had been in the hospital when her heart finally gave out. More than when Richie had piled into his car with all his shit for his college dorm and left Derry and never called Eddie again.

Because he’d been about to lose Richie. Richie had almost just--like fucking  _ Stan-- _ and Eddie just. He didn’t let it be real for him. He didn’t move, because moving meant reacting, and reacting meant admitting that this was reality, and Richie’s life was on the line.

And Eddie didn’t fucking  _ move, _ because he’s a goddamn coward when it came to fucking everything, apparently.

***

Years later, Eddie could pinpoint the moment that he realized that he had feelings for Richie.

It had been one of those lonely nights, three weeks after Richie left Derry and hadn’t called at all, even though he’d promised that he’d call every night “to have phone sex with your mom, Eddie, even distance can’t stop me getting laid.”

It was one or two a.m., and it was a cloudy night, the kind where none of the stars could shine through the thick blanket in the atmosphere. The kind of night that didn’t feel real, that couldn’t be a part of Eddie’s world and his actual orbit.

That’s probably why it the only time he ever thought about it. Ever let himself admit it, laying down and staring up at his ceiling fan circling around and around, listening to the uneven, ugly snores from his mom next door (she had undiagnosed sleep apnea, but she always swore she was fine, that it was Eddie that had to worry, what with all his allergies and digestive issues and autoimmune weakness).

And even though it was late, and Eddie had to sleep because he had early morning classes at the local community college, all he could think about Richie, what he was doing, if he was sleeping or working on an assignment or partying even though it was a Tuesday and he probably had classes in the morning and whether, at that party, he was making out with some girl who laughed at all his jokes even if they weren’t very funny, and--

“Shit,” Eddie said, and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

Eddie had gotten up, pulled on sweats instead of his pajama pants and snuck out down the stairs, out the back door. He had some shitty, half-formed idea to go back to that Clubhouse that they’d stopped visiting in sophomore year of high school, but it was probably unstable and unsafe, and Eddie wasn’t sure he could navigate his way back there in the darkness of the stupid cloudy night.

So instead, Eddie sat down on the curb right outside his house. It was silent outside--Derry really was a sleepy fucking town. No one was up except Eddie, probably. Except maybe Mike, but he lived miles away, and he’d gotten kind of weird. Really obsessive about Derry’s history, and always stopping by the library, even though the librarian had passed away last summer and no one had gotten around to even filling the empty position.

So it was just Eddie and this stupid cloudy night and it shouldn’t have been that way, because there had always been Richie with his coke bottle glasses and mousy grin, always right behind Eddie’s shoulder, about to make some dumb fucking joke that wasn’t even funny.

Eddie’s heart did a weird little lurch, and he tried to tell himself that it’s just because he missed Richie, same as he missed the rest of his friends.

But it was something about that night.

Eddie stared up at the night sky, so dark and so bleak, and thought about how Richie had held Eddie’s face in his hands, so hard it left little red bruises under his chin, just so that Eddie wouldn’t turn his head and look at Pennywise. How fucking--traumatizing that memory’s supposed to be (Bev stabbed It with a fucking  _ poker  _ and that hadn’t stopped It), but all he could think of was Richie’s desperation in that moment, how he’d reached out to protect Eddie in that moment, in that moment of horror and fear. Like it was natural for Richie, the need to protect Eddie.

And Eddie--Eddie hadn’t ever had anyone care about him like  _ that. _ The natural kind of protection, not his mom’s messed-up version. Because sure, Richie was fucking stupid, and annoying, and after his growth spurt he was all limb and nothing else like a freaking Daddy Longlegs, but Richie loved his friends. That had become clear, at least, with all the killer clown shit.

And after that, Eddie had looked at Richie differently. Because sure, Richie was an idiot and nothing would quite be able to change that, but he wasn’t ever mean, and he even stuck up for Eddie once or twice, not that Eddie ever asked him to. And his hair had this habit of falling across his face so carelessly, especially after he’d quit trying to straighten it, and all Eddie wanted to do was run his hands through his hair. He wanted to listen to Richie rant for hours about comic books, and sometimes Eddie caught himself looking more at Richie’s lips than his eyes when he spoke--

“I love him,” Eddie said, testing it out into the empty air of the deserted street. “I love Richie Tozier, and he,” Eddie’s breath caught, “he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore.”

And under the cover of that night, Eddie let himself sit with that. Took deep, slow breaths, and for once, he let his eyes tear up. He thought about how much he liked Richie,  _ really liked him, _ from the tips of his toes up to the crown of his head. Eddie let himself wallow, and he felt more grounded, somehow. More  _ him  _ than he ever has been.

And when the sun began to rise, he shuffled his way back to his room, and laid on top of his blankets, and he prayed for the phone to ring.

He got two hours of sleep that night, and the next day, when he went to school, there were no missed calls, and Eddie swore to himself that it meant nothing to him. That he was--completely normal. Liked tits, didn’t kill a fucking clown when he was thirteen. 

Wasn’t in love with a dweeb that  _ didn’t care about him,  _ even though Eddie thought that he had.

***

“You’re braver than you think,” Richie tells Eddie, so matter-of-fact like it’s got to be the truth.

_You’re braver than you think,_ like Eddie had some--some hidden well of strength in him. Like he’s capable of more than he is, like he’s--like he’s still that little kid with the fanny pack and a smart mouth, like he’s still got somewhere to go, like there are things that Eddie can still learn and grow from.

It’s because Richie probably still sees him as a little kid, Eddie reasons. Because they haven’t seen each other since they were young, so they only remember each other  _ as  _ young. 

The problem is that there’s nowhere for Eddie to go. He’s never gonna get better. There was a time for that--a time after It, but before he left Derry, where he stopped taking placebo pills and stopped listening to his mom and listened to rock music instead, where he’d smoke questionable weed with Richie and talk about the Future, like there were places Eddie could go that weren’t the ones that he’d already visited.

But then his mom’s health worsened, and he didn’t apply to any out-of-state colleges in high school because as much as he resented his mom, he still felt tied to her somehow. And then he left and he forgot everything and it might have been the time to start over but instead, Eddie just shrank back into himself. Started thinking he was sick, because otherwise there’s no reason for him not to work in the world like he’s supposed to, there had to be something wrong with  _ him  _ that he couldn’t fix and Myra thought so too, so of course that was the truth--

And now he’s forty and he’s fighting a clown that he knows, down in the depths of his soul, isn’t the scariest thing out there. Because nothing that clown did could compare to just--the knowledge that Eddie wasn’t gonna change anything. He couldn’t. He’d crash his car on purpose instead of admitting that all the problems he had weren’t with a fucking alien clown but instead with himself.

But Richie says it, and.

He’s just so sure. Like he knows that Eddie’ll go into the sewers and  _ not  _ get everyone killed, even though he probably will. Eddie knows better, he’ll probably screw everyone over, but.

Richie doesn’t think so.

So Eddie goes with him.

***

Richie Tozier was one of those B-list comedians that Eddie was familiar with, but he’d never cared that much about him.

There wasn’t ever a reason for Eddie  _ to  _ care about him. Myra called Richie Tozier ‘crass,’ said that his nickname as Trashmouth was the only honest thing about his act. Once they’d been channel-surfing and had come across his special and she’d gone on a five-minute rant about the unholiness of stand-up comedy.

But then, one night when Myra was out on a business trip or on a time-share vacation or who-the-fuck-knows-where, Eddie had been nursing a glass of wine and found a very, very old special of Richie’s on, like, the second channel of FX or Comedy Central or something.

His hair was all dark and messy, and he looked like he was in his early twenties, and the audio was all echo-y like it was filmed in the nineties, and he kept trying to lean on his mic stand even though it was too short for his lanky frame. And he made these shitty jokes that the audience didn’t really laugh at, but Eddie had been--interested. There was this look in Richie’s eyes, this heavy determination. A set to his jaw that meant that Richie was there because he  _ needed  _ to be there, not because it was for fun, for him. And sometimes he’d make a joke, a  _ really good joke, _ that landed perfectly, and Eddie would genuinely laugh.

“I forgot most of my childhood,” Richie mentioned, and Eddie found himself leaning forward, despite himself. “That’s fuckin--weird. Best I can guess, I did some really embarrassing shit and made myself forget on purpose. That’s the only guess I got. And I gotta say, I appreciate younger me for repressing the  _ shit  _ out of whatever happened. People are always like,  _ don’t you wanna move forward? Know what happened so you’re not--repeating cycles or some shit? _ One guy tried to give me the number of his therapist, but I don’t really care? I figure repression’s better than therapy. Cheaper, too! Why remember and relive your trauma when you can forget about it, for  _ free? _ Sure, I might wanna off myself by the time I’m thirty and I’ll probably have night terrors until then, but they’ll call me tortured, and I’ll probably get better ratings on my specials, and I don’t have to remember how sad I am until I’ve already fucking slit my wrists, so. I think it’s a fucking win-win scenario, honestly.”

It’s not as if Eddie found it funny. If anything, probably a bit morbid and definitely oversharing, but there was just something there. Something that made Eddie want to reach out, want to say,  _ hey, I get it. _ Because he did. What Richie Tozier was talking about--it was something that resonated with Eddie. For the first time, at one a.m. on his sofa, alone, Eddie felt seen. Heard.

He’d fallen asleep to that special, that night.

(The next day, though, Eddie searched up some of Richie’s newest material, and it wasn’t--it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Richie Tozier. It was some asshole with the mouth of Richie, talking about things for shock value instead of him trying to say  _ something  _ in the form of a joke. So Eddie closed out the Internet tabs, and he mostly forgot about Richie Tozier until the phone call from Mike three years later.)

(When Richie said he didn’t write his recent material--Eddie, well. He fucking  _ knew it. _ )

***

Richie’s caught in the Deadlights, and. And Eddie’s almost lost him once tonight, and he’s lost him for twenty-seven years, and when Eddie’s scared he can’t move, he can’t move fucking  _ forward, _ but he’s not scared. Because he can kill fucking monsters, and fuck this, fuck  _ all of this. _

He throws a fence post at It and it screeches this horrible, otherworldly sound, and Eddie feels it like it’s injected into his veins, that sound--it fills him with this energy, and he knows, he  _ knows  _ he killed It in that moment, just because Eddie believed that he could.

_ I’m braver than I think, _ Eddie thinks, and he fucking  _ is _ . 

Richie drops like a stone.

“Fuck,” Eddie says, out loud, and throws himself over the rocks of this fucking cavern, launches himself over to Richie, to this fucking dumbass with coke bottle glasses who tried to start a rock war with an interdimensional being, and in that moment, Eddie thinks he can tell Richie, because Richie isn’t much bigger than Eddie, and they can do this. He can see it all.

Richie blinks awake, and Eddie beams at Richie, tells him that he killed It, because he  _ did, _ and he’d saved Richie and it’s all gonna be all right, they can move forward, out of this fucking place--

Something rips through him.

***

His mom had died of a heart attack in her sixties.

She’d already had open heart surgery. Was supposed to be on medication, and a diet, and an exercise program, but she’d shunned them all to watch primetime soap operas and eat Doritos and call Eddie every Tuesday and Thursday to remind him that he was gonna die from Mad Cow Disease, diphtheria, pneumonia, the flu,  _ anything, _ and would he please move back home instead of working as a Risk Analyst as a bigshot in New York City, which was germ-infested, by the way.

She’d had congestive heart failure before the final heart attack, so Eddie had flown out to Derry, rented a too-expensive hotel room and stayed by her bedside. He’d held her chubby, pale hand, watching how the fat seemed to droop from her palms and the knuckles of her fingers, and her last words to him had been “I love you,” clearly expecting him to say it back.

He’d kissed her hand, so pillowy and cold, and he’d stayed for her, and he watched the light drain from her eyes, but he hadn’t said it back. He couldn’t. He couldn’t just--lie to a dying person like that, no matter how much he wanted to.

And he’d seen the disappointment flicker in her eyes. The deep hurt that broke across her face like a chasm, before there was nothing there at all.

It had been horrible.

***

  
  


Eddie’s dying.

He knows it as soon as the limb pulls back out of his body. He hears the crack of bones, the blood splashing against the bottom of the cavern, like it all belongs to someone else. But it belongs to him.

Richie grabs him, eyes so wide it could be funny. Tries to hustle him from place to place, talking so fast it’s like his mouth has grown a whole mind of its own. Eddie smiles tightly at that, because that’s always been Richie’s way.

Richie leans him up against a boulder, so soft and careful despite the grime and gore of It’s entire fucking lair, and he brushes a hand against Eddie’s face, and Eddie thinks he should tell Richie. The gesture reminds him of so long ago, another life, where Richie had done the same thing for Eddie, had held Eddie when he was so hurt and so scared.

Eddie feels a bit like he’s drifting now. The incredible pain becomes a throbbing, which becomes nothing but a pale ache. Maybe it’s Eddie drifting away, or maybe--maybe Eddie thinks that the injury’s smaller than it is.

Smaller than It is.

The leper, shrinking under Eddie's hands, writhing and trying to get away from him.

Shit.

“I know how to kill It,” Eddie says, and he gets sidetracked. They all ask him questions, and it shocks Eddie, realizing that all of his other friends are also there. For a moment, it had just felt like it was just him and Richie.

And then they’re running away, they’re all doing--something, but Richie’s still there, and Eddie thinks he should tell him. He can taste blood on his lips, and--and Richie deserves to know, but--

But. Richie doesn’t deserve that. Not now. Not without--explanation. It’d be. It’d be cruel to leave Richie like that, with that knowledge. It’d be cowardly, especially since Eddie’s not. He’s not getting out of this cavern.

(And right now, Eddie needs Richie closer than ever. If Richie pulls away--can’t say it back--Eddie can’t deal with that. Not in his--in his final moments.)

_ I’ll tell him if I live, _ Eddie thinks wildly. A pipe dream. Maybe a coward’s promise.

Richie says, “You’re hurt bad, man, tell me if I--if--what can I do, I don’t--”

Eddie almost breaks apart. “Hey, Rich, I gotta--I gotta tell you something.”

“What?”

Richie’s eyes are so bright. They’re so close to Eddie’s. Eddie breathes in and feels his lungs batter against the gristle in his chest.

“I fucked your mom,” Eddie says.

Richie’s laugh, hard and hysterical and probably not amused at all--it’s worth it.

***

_ I’ll tell him if I live. _

_ If I live, I’ll tell him. _

If  _ I live, I know that I’ll tell him, because I’ll have to. _

_ Because I’m braver than I think I am. _

_ If I live... _

**Author's Note:**

> you might say, this feels unfinished. and yeah, that's fucking valid, but in my defense--I think I already wrote the ending? So I don't feel like doing it again.
> 
> Hi, I think I'm falling apart, but it's a clean break. You might say, "what the fuck is that supposed to mean?" to which I say: "I'll tell you when I know."
> 
> Do you ever wish you were good at something? Really good? And everyone knew it, and you could do that, and you had all the rest of your life in check, and you had a calling and a sane brain that lets you treat people correctly and be correctly interested in them instead of a weird half-and-half where you think you know them but all you fucking know is yourself and also you aren't good at anything and holy shit I'm gonna shut up now.
> 
> It's all good, don't worry. Sunday night breakdowns are, like, required for me at this point.
> 
> I hope it's not the worst thing you ever read, and if it is, feel free to tell me. I know it ended ABRUPTLY. No one's yelled at me in a while and I think they should lmao.
> 
> On a more mentally stable note: If you liked this, please check out my [website](https://muldoonstories.com/) for more stories. Also, I just made a [twitter](https://twitter.com/allierowell2/). Cards on the table, it's under a pseudonym because I'm a weirdo, but please talk to me on there ! Promise I'm nicer on there than I am on here, haha.


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